Universality of "O" and Shakespeare

Watching the film "O" over the last class periods, and our discussions on other Shakespeare plays being made into modern movies, I started to really think about one of the questions raised in class: do these films suggest Shakespeare to be universal? Shakespeare's works have been enjoyed on the stage and screen, in reading their texts, and turned into operas since the time they were written. They continue to be studied in a wide range of classes from one generation to the next, and continue to have an affect. His lines rhyme and flow, tell timeless stories of love, hate, war, families, traditions, and kings and queens of times past. His characters are wild and free, tame and uptight, villains and the most gentle of beauties. His works are read and reenacted, interpreted and referenced all around the world, either inspiring other works or being rewritten to fit the modern times such as in "O." Shakespeare has had so great an effect on the theatrical, literary, scholarly, historical, and humanistic worlds of our time, so how can he not be universal? His name is recognized by scholars across the globe, and his genius cannot be replicated. He was a mind of his own whose stories still apply today. All you had to do with "Taming of the Shrew" was make the father a successful doctor, have the mother leave the family years before, the younger daughter Bianca the high school sophomore sweetie, and older sister Kat the school well, bitch, who spoke her mind and didn't care what others thought of her, and you have a Box Office hit with "Ten Things I Hate About You." There's even a character who loves Shakespeare so much she can identify the most random lines from it. There's even a movie about Shakespeare and his own life, mostly fictional I'd guess but still had enough to win an oscar.

The effect Shakespeare has had on the modern world is unlike any other writer's that I've been able to see. Sure, movies by authors such as Jane Austen and Nicholas Sparks get made into movies like I mentioned in my other post, but nothing like the countless ways Shakespeare's have. If his plays aren't being performed on stages, they're either being made into movies themselves or turned into adaptions like "O" or "She's the Man." Taken all that he's had an effect on, I'd say Shakespeare is pretty universal.